L’ortolan is, as I’m sure readers of a food blog will know, a small bird that is both a delicacy and an illegal meal in France. The bird is drowned in Armagnac plucked, oven cooked then eaten whole, bones and all, under a napkin. This 'under a napkin' lark is said to be either i) to fully capture the aromas, or ii) to hide your crime of eating a tinnyn songbird from the eyes of God (though personally I think if God is worth his name, he can probably see through napkins; just saying). It is said that Francois Mitterrand’s last meal was two of the birds, after which he didn’t eat again for 10 days before passing. L’ortolan is not on the menu at L’ortolan as far as I could see, though perhaps there’s a secret password that when uttered with a nod and a wink in the right direction...

The restaurant today is under the direction of Executive Chef Alan Murchison who will likely be familiar to Great British Menu fans having reached the finals this year where he demonstrated a meticulous attention to detail leading me to expect a precise and focussed menu today. The show also highlighted his commitment toward fitness (you’re on your own there Alan) but it all adds up to a chef with a passion to deliver the very best.

We’ve been wanting to go for some time, and today heading west along the M4, it seemed an ideal stop off for lunch (though a lunch for one today however). Looking to Urbanspoon, there are no blog posts for L’ortolan currently posted; this is not then a blogger destination.

Turning off the M4, L’ortolan is immediately signposted for which I’m grateful despite having SatNav. There’s few things more frustrating than driving around unable to find your destination, knowing you’re close but still arriving late. 

I didn’t really know what to expect of the place, it’s not in London so it’s probably not in an office block but it’s sort of Reading so it could be towny. As turns out, it’s quite a beautiful location, made more so by a rare dose of late summer sun and a blue sky. The venue is apparently an old vicarage (l’ortolan eating vicars giving it its name perhaps?) but it has been a restaurant for some some years now. It’s peaceful and calming, and only if you listen carefully can you here the M4 traffic. It makes for a good first impression.

My pre lunch orange juice is taken in the greenhouse style conservatory where some nibbles are also served and where you can peruse the menu. There’s plenty of choices with the lunch menu, a la carte and two tasting menus. I also like the fact that there’s a summer tasting menu of 5 courses for £39, something to suit everybody’s pocket (Novikov take note).

The dining room is what you’d expect for Michelin starred French restaurant but the room mood is relatively relaxed with the sound of table chatter suppressing the piped smooth jazz that otherwise fills the momentary synchronised conversational pause.

The aroma of warm bread is always a good way to start and a choice of four home baked breads are presented: sunblushed tomato, focaccia, sour dough and granary baguette. I sample each, it’s good stuff, the salty herby hit from the focaccia my favourite. An amuse of tomato essence and goats cheese in a tea cup is light and fresh, a nice way to start.

My starter is titled ‘Langoustine’ with the menu's written style being a featured ingredient followed by a description, here: tartar of langoustine, cucumber jelly, lime dressed crab, prawn crackers, ginger emulsion. I liked this dish as far as it went but sadly it failed to go far enough for what I wanted. The langoustine tartar comprised only two thin disks of langoustine, canapé size, which together could only have summed up to a small fraction of the langoustine’s body mass. I’m not entirely cheated overall however, there’s a reasonable amount of crab here, and indeed, crab would have been a better name for the dish because it both tops the langoustine and lives more generously under the ‘simulated sea’ of cucumber jelly but it’s not entirely the dish I expected. 

The main course ‘lemon sole’ is indeed what it says, coming here with coco beans, radish, samphire, cockles and champagne & verbena sauce. This is good stuff: precise cooking, good quality lemon sole, melt in the mouth perfection on the fish. It’s the kind of dish you expect from a good Michelin starred French restaurant which is absolutely fine and I doubt there’s much like it anywhere in the near vicinity without turning tail and crossing back inside the M25.

A pre dessert is a coconut espuma with mango which delights as the mango unexpectedly bursts like an egg. The waiter says it is NOT a spherification, though I didn’t entirely understand what exactly he said it was instead, something about the freezer. It’s nicely delightful however and with coconut and mango, tropically fresh.

My dessert is ‘Lemon’, that is lemon curd, crispy meringues, raspberry sorbet, pickled raspberry, making it again a dish with an on-plate power play, being lemon versus raspberry with raspberry coming out on top. There's a further mix of childhood sweets remembered and a more modern deconstruction element, and to be fair, every element was enjoyable. But if the langoustine should have been more languostiney, so the lemon dish should have been a little more lemony. Either that or change the menu from headlining so prominently a single ingredient.

With admittedly rather little to go on before hand, this restaurant was nevertheless broadly what I had expected. Staff worked hard to deliver the appropriate customer experience and the meal was excellent in its delivery, only falling down on when it came to the menu description in not always delivering exactly what I had expected – it could just be me. Elsewhere, there was an odd quirk of having Audi Reading brochures in the toilet, allowing you to combine eating out with buying a new car, but I loved the fish tank that separated the walkway from the kitchen making a feature from a difficult space.

Undoubtedly a talented kitchen, prices to suit most pockets and staff that try hard, L'ortolan's good reputation and Michelin star is well deserved and as the only starred restaurant in Reading, is an understandably popular choice with locals when they want to be spoiled just that little but more than normal.